Someone That I Knew Before
by Willie The Plaid Jacket
Summary: When Sherlock comes back from the dead, he wants John with him again, as they were before. But John has been through too much to go back to how things were, and try as he might, he can't reconcile this Sherlock with the one that's been living in his memories for the last two years. M/M Slash
1. Chapter 1

Written for the third Let's Write Sherlock challenge: 'Write a fic based on music'. I chose 'All Your Gold' by Bat for Lashes.

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Twenty-six months after Sherlock Holmes' body hit the pavement outside St Bart's Hospital, someone wearing his face turned up at John Watson's door.

His eyes were light and his features sharp, just like Sherlock. He was tall and pale and had a mop of unruly curls atop his head, just like Sherlock. His hands were long and elegant, and his posture was poised, and his clothes were crisp, and his mouth twitched just so, just like Sherlock.

And when he said 'John', his voice moved passed his full lips in a rumble that made the addressed man's hair stand on end... just like Sherlock.

Though, it wasn't Sherlock. It couldn't be Sherlock. Of this, John was certain. Because he went to a funeral for Sherlock. He wept like he had never wept in his life for Sherlock. Because for this man to be who he so appeared, John Watson would have to have been living a lie.

There were words exchanged between John and this most convincing apparition; breathy and disjointed on John's part, clear and succinct on the other's. For every question he asked, John received a comprehensive and convincing answer, and little by little his certainty that this could not be his long since departed friend shrunk and gave way to a new possibility:

This was indeed Sherlock, back from a death that never was. And John Watson was a fool.

Soon enough John reined control over his breathing, and disbelief turned to anger. Sherlock saw the change in him as clearly as he would a traffic light warning him to stop, and so changed his approach from an informed explanation of events to a placating explanation of his reasonings and motives.

It did nothing to temper John's temper as the swiftly delivered right hook to Sherlock's jaw acted as proof.

John stood in silence for a few moments over the body of his former friend who lay sprawled in the entryway to his flat, unable to feel satisfied by the expression of shock adorning the man's face.

'Get out', he said without inflection and with a forceful tone the likes of which Sherlock had never heard directed at himself before. It stunned him almost as much as the punch had.

John twitched as if intending to bend over and grab Sherlock by the lapels so as to throw him through the open doorway, but decided against it almost immediately; the thought of touching the man again making his stomach turn.

Voice rendered useless by all that had transpired, Sherlock stood in silence and looked at John, really looked at him, to determine just how much his friend meant what he had said.

When he found no uncertainty in John's expression, he looked away and nodded minutely, more for his own benefit than anything else, before turning slowly and exiting the small, bland, so-very-unlike-221B flat.

It wasn't until the door was firmly shut that John fell to his knees, clutching his stomach, and tried to will his lungs to work through the oncoming panic attack.


	2. Chapter 2

Three April's previous, London had shaken off the lingering winter chill with the first burst of warm weather that year, and so the criminal classes took a weekend off.

The grey cloud of boredom that threatened to fall over Baker Street, however, dissipated due to a powerful gust of seduction from one hurricane Watson. Blowing in to the Kitchen from the living room, intercepting his more-than-friend/boyfriend/lover/partner/whatever- Sherlock-decided-they-were-to-be-referred-to-as-th at-week's hand that was at that moment agitatedly running though his own hair, John led them both down the short hallway to Sherlock's room and made sure that boredom was a word that did not exist in any English language dictionary as far as either of them was concerned for the next few hours at the very least. He had not hoped to have maintained such a feat for almost a solid 30 plus hours when he began his endeavour, leading to a feeling of immense smugness, a contented self-proclaimed sociopath, a thoroughly shagged out doctor and a weekend that would stay in John's memory for the next two and a half years as very possibly the best of his life.

That near perfect day and a half of touching and moaning and sweating and sleeping was stored in a corner of John's mind that he would sometimes visit voluntarily or would occasionally visit him unbidden, but was always remembered with fondness and an aching heart.

There were moments he couldn't recall no matter how hard he tried. Such as when either of them had left the room to use the bathroom during a moment of respite. Or, when the delivery man arrived with their food, whether Sherlock had put any pants on before answering the door. Or how they got from laying widthways across the bed with Sherlock riding John painfully slowly, to John pushing Sherlock against the wall at the head of the bed, slamming into him from behind.

But he could remember the important things with sparkling clarity. Like the sighing noise Sherlock made when John sank down onto him, and the smell of that room by the end, and the feathery touches of Sherlock's fingers against each and every scar that littered John's body.

That was one of his favourite recollections, the game Sherlock had made out of it. What had started as an inquisitive exploration leading John to tell the corresponding story of how he acquired the scar in question soon became a test. John would say nothing, leaving Sherlock to extract the story and the age of each scar simply by looking and feeling. After getting not a single one incorrect, the game evolved once again. With the two men lying on their sides, facing one another, John guided Sherlock's hand to an unsolved scar and offered one clue. Without looking, instead gazing into John's eyes and speaking in hushed tones, Sherlock would fill in the blanks.

It went on for what seemed to be hours, staring at one another; the soft feel of fingertips stroking and searching.

When John ran out of places to guide Sherlock to, he reached out and ran his thumb over the faint indentation at the edge of Sherlock's bottom lip. The younger man offered no explanation for the mark, nor did John have his own answer. Instead, Sherlock moved the doctor's hand to a raised line of skin on his ribs. John thought that maybe it felt like a knife wound or perhaps a cut from a shard of glass. Before he could say as much, his hand was placed on a scar of less distinguishable shape on Sherlock's hip. Then a rounded patch of skin on his thigh.

Chest. Knee. Shoulder. Neck.

All remained a mystery, but all taught John something new.

Then, finally, his fingers came to rest at the crook of Sherlock's left elbow. Small bumps of flesh gathered in a cluster. John knew what they were, he didn't have to see them or ask for Sherlock to elucidate. Of course he'd seen them before, even felt them before, albeit fleetingly. John hadn't known whether Sherlock liked to have them touched and had never thought it right to ask. But in that moment, he was given permission. Sherlock had presented John with the evidence of his weakness and said without words, 'I trust you.'

That's what it had all been about, the learning of scars and staring into one another. It was trust. It was giving each other these fragments of such personal moments and proclaiming that now they were shared moments.

It had hit John like a kick to the chest, the realisation that he trusted Sherlock so implicitly, so totally and so much more than anyone else he had ever known. So much more at that moment than any moment they had shared before.

'I love you', he said.

The words may not have been important to Sherlock, they may not have been what he wanted to hear, but there was no other way John could think to express that feeling that had settled beneath his ribs. So he said them and kissed Sherlock before the man could snort at the inane sentiment or respond with a witty retort or repeat it back.

They made love one last time before Sherlock's phone rang.

The man that John Watson loved was the one that had lain with him in that bed, sharing old wounds.

The man he loved kept horrid things in the fridge and found tobacco ash more gripping than the telly.

The man he loved dove off a building with the world believing he was a fake.

And therein lay the problem. The Sherlock that had turned up at his flat was not that man. It was the same body and voice, but not the same being. John had spent months with the memory of the person that he knew before and was certain that this other version was just that; other. Separate. Individual.

He did not love this other man.

And he certainly didn't trust him.


End file.
